Penn student charged

Prosecutors may ask judge to waive 16-year-old to adult court on conspiracy to commit murder.

Prosecutors may ask judge to waive 16-year-old to adult court on conspiracy to commit murder.

May 02, 2008|JEFF PARROTT Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- Prosecutors Thursday formally charged a 16-year-old Penn High School student with conspiracy to commit murder in connection with his alleged plans to kill students at the school. The crime would be a Class A felony, punishable by 20 to 50 years in prison, if committed by an adult. St. Joseph County Prosecutor Michael Dvorak has eight days to decide whether he will ask Juvenile Judge Peter Nemeth to waive his jurisdiction so that the teen can be prosecuted as an adult, said Catherine Wilson, Dvorak's press secretary. The boy's mother, citing the advice of his attorney, James Nafe Jr., declined comment when reached today at her home in Mishawaka. "I just want to be left alone," she said. In the charging document, formally called a "petition alleging delinquency," prosecutors claim that on April 20, the boy conspired with another person to commit murder ... by selecting a date for the attack, by researching how to obtain a Tech 9 mm handgun, by researching how to make propane bombs, and by researching the "Anarchist's Cookbook ..." He remained detained at the county's Juvenile Justice Center. Ohio officials also have jailed his alleged co-conspirator, Lee Billi, a 33-year-old security guard living in suburban Cleveland. Authorities say Billi and the teen shared a love of horror movies, especially "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and sympathy for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Littleton, Colo., teens who in April 1999 murdered 13 people at Columbine High School before killing themselves. Meanwhile, South Bend animal control officials said they are moving closer to finding homes for the snakes, frog and spider they confiscated from the home of the boy's uncle, where the boy had been staying in South Bend. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service planned today to take two timber rattlesnakes because they are an endangered species, said Katherine Toppel, city code enforcement director. The rattlesnakes were the only venomous snakes confiscated. Toppel said she was not sure whether the federal agency would be taking any of the teen's other animals, which include two corn snakes, a king snake, a red-tailed boa constrictor, a baboon spider and an exotic frog. City ordinance prohibits keeping wild animals, and specifically, venomous snakes. Toppel said the city has received "more calls than we anticipated" from individuals looking to adopt the animals, but the city will only turn them over to an established animal rescue group or zoo.